Category: Sustainable Packaging
11/01/2008
Suzanne Fenton

Whether you agree or disagree about what they are or the severity of them, the environmental issues we face today are pivotal concerns for today’s society.  It seems to me that more and more companies recognize that their customers are being challenged by the end consumers, which means more business challenges for everyone.  At TricorBraun, some of the questions we are now asking are, ”How can we help our customers provide products in packaging that will be good for society as well as good for their business?  What are we, as a corporation, doing to be more sustainable?”

Sustainable.  Unless you’ve been living in a cave (and if you have, that’s probably a sustainable lifestyle on certain levels), you’ve heard that term. After several intense years of many people and several organizations hashing it out, sustainability is generally understood to cover several areas, not only environmental, but also social and economical.  Overlapping goals in those three areas has come to be known as the “triple bottom line.”  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_bottom_line  
 

In fact, a very informative book by that name was written by Andy Savitz (with Karl Weber) outlining the basics of the theory along with success stories from companies which have implemented changes in their companies’ processes and policies in order to harmonize objectives for “people, planet, and profits.” http://www.getsustainable.net/
 

In a nutshell, a business isn’t sustainable if it’s no longer in business due to economic difficulties (which hurts society because the people it employed no longer have jobs and the business isn’t contributing to the tax base), so it does not make economic sense to confront all the environmental issues at once. 
 

But a step-by-step approach, just starting that journey, is a worthwhile start.  TricorBraun is a member of the Sustainable Packaging Coalition (www.sustainablepackaging.org) and has membership on the Sustainable Packaging Technical Committee of the Institute of Packaging Professionals (www.iopp.org).  Both of these organizations have excellent information on their websites where you can learn more about what to do, how to do it and who is doing it.  Check out those sites for more information!